March 06, 2009

Essential Twitter Advice, Apps and Tools

The Web isn’t short on articles about Twitter, but we wanted to write a post about the best applications and tools for Twitter—and articles about Twitter—for the findingDulcinea audience, particularly those who are news hounds, educators or simply Web explorers. Without further ado:
Learning the Lingo

What do all those symbols mean? What’s an @reply? What’s a direct message? To learn about the functions that you can use on Twitter, as well as other wise dos and don’ts, read Mashable’s “HOW TO: Build Community on Twitter.”
Desktop Twitter

You can't have multiple accounts on TweetDeck, a desktop Twitter application from Adobe Air. But you can do pretty much anything else you'd want to on Twitter without the burden of a browser.

Following and Gaining Followers

How do you find the types of users you want to follow? Twellow is a great place to start. Search by top-level category like “Education,” then drill down to a subcategory like “Teachers” or “Librarians.” You’ll get a list of everyone Twellow has indexed. Clicking “follow” next to a user will direct you to their Twitter page. Once there, click “follow” if you like what you see.
For news addicts, following newspapers and aggregators on Twitter can be a great way to get headlines sooner than you're used to.

TwitDir is similar to Twellow, but also has nice features that will tell you the top users by number of followers and top users by number of tweets.

Mr. Tweet is like having your own personal assistant for Twitter. Follow Mr. Tweet on Twitter and he’ll send you twice-weekly tweets where you can view personal recommendations for who to follow, as well as see other statistics about your account, your followers and people you follow.
Feeding the Beast

If you have a blog or other publication, you can tweet your posts or articles on your Twitter account using a service like TwitterFeed.
TwitterFeed requires an OpenID username, but many common services like Blogger and Flickr are part of OpenID.
Learning When to Stop